Historic Hood River
Alva Day Revisited
Notes
Last week Dennis Day, Grandson of Alva and Io Day, and his wife Sandy came to visit us at the museum. It turns out Dennis is the one who deposited the box of 2500 negatives at the museum many years ago. I alway suspected there was more Alva Day material out there, and sure enough Dennis brought about four more shoe boxes of material from his grandfather Alva Day and his father Carroll Day. While many of the images in these boxes are prints of images we’ve already seen, there are many images we haven’t seen. Also, many of the prints have identification which we didn’t have from the negatives.
While most of our knowledge to date of Alva and Io Day has been deduced from the massive photographic archive he left, now I had the chance to speak with someone who knew them as “Grandpa and Grandma.” I learned that Alva liked to bring out his moonshine for special occasions and had the biggest tomato patch in the neighborhood. We laughed at how carefully he documented the construction of his new garage to replace the “Model T garage” which Dennis was afraid to go into because Grandpa said it was about to fall down. And while we knew of his extended visit to Alaska in 1917, now we have a postcard he sent to his young son telling him how much he missed him.
It will take me a while to process all of this new material, but this week I’ll share a few fun items from our newly extended Alva Day collection.
I think it’s funny, with all the photos Alva Day took of Mt. Hood, that he used a Fred Donnerberg image for his business card.
L.E.
Thank you to Grandson Dennis and his wife for making the trip to Hood River.
Thank you to you Arthur, for bringing Alva Day and his family into our lives.
In many ways we know Alva, but in many ways he is still a mystery, but we know he must have loved Hood River, Mt Hood, Lost Lake and Eastern Oregon.
Jana Fredricy Pringle
Wondering if JH Fredricy is a relative? My dad was born in 1917 in PA but had brothers born way before 1900. A lot of family resemblance in that photo. If you have any info on him would you email it to me please.